2025/082: The Bull from the Sea — Mary Renault

2025/082: The Bull from the Sea — Mary Renault

The fire leaped high; it shone down the long stone-lined cutting into the mound, showing the painted doorposts of the burial vault, the new bronze hasps of the open doors, and the Erechthid snake upon the lintel. But it did not pierce the dark beyond; sometimes when my back was turned I could feel him standing in the shadows beyond the doorway to watch his rites, as they show dead men in the funeral pictures. [loc. 336]

Sequel to The King Must Die: I think as a teenager I read this first, an old paperback from the jumble sale. Narrated again by Theseus, it's the story of everything that happens after his return from Crete: his father's funeral, becoming king, his friendship with Pirithoos the Lapith (a Bad Influence, to be honest), his relationship with the Amazon Hippolyta, their son Hippolytus and Theseus' frustration with his chosen life... There are curiously primitive Kentaurs, an encounter with Oedipus, and a foreshadowing of Paris's Judgment: also a fleeting encounter with a young Achilles. And through it all, warp and weft, Theseus's sense of the gods: his religious and spiritual practices. 

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